Lena Chettiar (born S. M. Letchuman Chettiar) was an Indian film producer known for his works in

Tamil cinema Tamil cinema is the segment of Indian cinema dedicated to the production of motion pictures in the Tamil language, the main spoken language in the state of Tamil Nadu. It is nicknamed Kollywood, a portmanteau of the names Kodambakkam, a Ch ...

Career

S. M. Letchuman Chettiar hailed from the Nattukottai Nagarathar clan in

Chettinad Chettinad (also known as Chettinadu) is a name that collectively refers to a locality that comprises 56 villages in the Sivaganga district and 20 villages in Pudukkottai district, Pudukottai district, which was historically ruled by the Ramnad ...

. Early on in his career, Lena was known for staging plays in southern Tamil-speaking areas and was a used car dealer, who became the first person to circulate

handbill A flyer (or flier) is a form of paper advertisement intended for wide distribution and typically posted or distributed in a public place, handed out to individuals or sent through the mail. Today, flyers range from inexpensively photocopied lea ...

s about cars in Tamil. He advised M. K. Thyagaraja Bhagavathar, a stage actor, against producing films. Bhagavathar's first film '' Pavalakkodi'', which ran well in Tamil-speaking areas of India and Ceylon (now

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...

), marked the debut of Lena as a film producer. Soon after the release of ''Pavalakkodi'', Lena moved to and managed his own production unit titled Krishna Pictures, which marked the Tamil debut of P. Kannamba. Lena was never credited as producer in any of his films as he was an "undischarged insolvent" in the later half of his life, because of which he could not carry on any business under his name. According to historian

Randor Guy Madabhushi Rangadorai (; 8 November 1937 – 23 April 2023), better known by his pen name Randor Guy (), was an Indian lawyer, columnist and film and legal historian associated with the English language newspaper ''The Hindu''. He was also the of ...

, he died "unsung and unhonoured".

Filmography

References

Bibliography

* {{authority control 20th-century Indian dramatists and playwrights Film directors from Tamil Nadu Indian lyricists Screenwriters from Tamil Nadu Tamil film directors Tamil film poets Tamil film producers Tamil screenwriters